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SUTCLIFFE JUGEND  The Fall Of Nature  CD   (Hospital Productions)   15.98
The Fall Of Nature IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Anyone that thinks that Sutcliffe Jugend can be easily catagorized and filed away as "power electronics" need only turn to this album for proof of their ongoing evolution within electronic extremism. The duo of Kevin Tomkins and Paul Taylor will always be thought of as part of the seminal 80's UK power electronics scene and connected to the influential Come Organization/Broken Flag aesthetic, but I am constantly amazed by the diversity of their more recent work, which often goes beyond mere PE and industrial noise into some other debauched realm altogether. Or, in the case of The Fall Of Nature, reaches skyward to grasp the sun in a show of staggering beauty that took my breath away the first time that I spun this disc. Released jointly between Ground Fault and Hospital Productions, this is a single 58 minute long track that begins with softly fluttering electronics streaking from one speaker to the other and a soft voice trilling and moaning from within clouds of rich cavernous reverb. Slowly, deep rumbling drones begin to appear, and then around fivge minutes in the music becomes overwhelmed by a battalion of heavily distorted synthesizers all blasting a single wavering drone straight up into the heavens, a thick corruscating blast of mesmerizing white heat that begins to waver and shudder like a massive plasma ray of symphonic bliss. It's almost like a Terry Riley piece played back at ear-destroying volume. Over the course of the next half hour, Sutcliffe Jugend sculpt and shape this monstrous solar drone into viscous waves of sawtooth grind and skull liquifying squelch, spewing feedback and mangled guitar snot and skull matter across your field of hearing, jacking up their instruments into brutal squalls of skree and noise and mangled high-end destruction but always, always circling that heavenly, blissed-out drone core that bores a hole into infinity. This synth-overload powerdrone also reminds me of some of Prurient's more recent experiments with heavily distorted synth, but these guys take it to the max. But then at the 30 minute point, that drone fades away completely, and suddenly the piece changes shape into a soundscape of minimal pulsating glitch and dark drifting ambience. Huge swells of distorted low-end roar emerge from some previously unseen abyss, and sparkling high-frequency tones flit about high up in the mix. It becomes this kind of massive cosmic noise-wall, and after awhile those vocals begin to fade in, harsh shrieking and demonic squeals dropping in from above, bathed in caustic feedback, a noxious obliterating power electronics assault that continues to assault the listener until right up to the end, when the music again changes shape, this last time into a murky ocean of distorted bass frequencies and distant roaring that closes the album. Intense and epic, for sure.


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